You know, this series is WAY easier when there are only three couples left. 🙂 Well, easier to write, not necessarily easier to predict.

Surprisingly, the judges didn’t really make it easier at all. With Hines and Chelsea tied, and Kirstie only 5 points back, it’s a horse race between Chelsea and Kirstie for second place. In my opinion. 🙂 You guys will be arguing for weeks over whether Kirstie was overscored, or underscored – same for Chelsea and Hines – but I actually didn’t have too much trouble with the scoring. I think Chelsea’s freestyle was over scored by 3 points or so – that just wasn’t good. Sorry, Kanenballers. Kirstie? I loved her freestyle just for what it was at this point in HER life. The woman is nearly FORTY years older than Chelsea. I would bet that 40 years is more than most of us here have in actual age. 🙂 Just amazing. And that’s one of the odd things about this show. You pit a 60 year old actress against a 23 year old actress and a 30-something athlete and you expect comparable dancing or fair?? Come on, now. It’s just not going to work. Surprisingly, the most “fair” finale I can remember is when it was Evan, Nicole and Erin – all about the same age and fitness level, and all three had experiences that benefited them going into the show.

Anyway, as I’ve said ad nauseum, I don’t have a problem with the judges ranking them – they’re entitled to do that, when they’re not on crack. They’ve ranked for the last two seasons now. Hell, they SHOULD rank the contestants – that’s like, their JOB. There is no way that all of them dance equally well. But that begs the question….how do you rank when the contestants are so vastly different?? Sure, Chelsea is (usually) technically better (don’t think that was true at all last night), but HINES is a true performer AND a decent dancer. He gets done dancing and I CLAP. I am entertained. Who’s to say that’s less important than technique? Besides Kanenballers. 🙂 I think at the end of the day, I probably would have done what they did, although perhaps I would have given Kirstie a couple tens – she’s 60 and she’s competing, after all. So, barring some over scoring of Chelsea and a bit of underscoring of Kirstie, I got no problems. Of course, I recognize also that with this group the over and under scoring probably won’t make a difference. I could be wrong. 🙂

At the close of Monday night’s show, this is where we ended up:

The Judges Scores and Percentages

Place

Celebrity

Score

Percentage

1.

Chelsea

59

34.3

2.

Hines

59

34.3

3.

Kirstie

54

31.4

As you can see, a 5 point judges score spread translates to a 2.91 percent spread. That in turn means what? Well, for Kirstie to take second over Chelsea, she needs 29,070 more votes per million votes cast – after these two dances, anyway. It’s difficult to say, but I think that’s doable. Right at this moment, in order to WIN, Kirstie needs that many more votes that BOTH Hines and Chelsea. Not impossible, I don’t think, but difficult to beat Hines. Hines, of course, only needs ONE more vote than Chelsea to win and he needs Kirstie not to get that 29k more than him. That’s how he wins. Right now. 🙂

But that’s not the end of the story. The one remaining question that seems to be rolling around out there is this: does the 3rd and final dance happen before or AFTER someone is eliminated?? No idea. If they ALL do their favorite dance and score them about the same as they did last night, it has virtually no impact. If they give Hines and Chelsea each a 30, and then give Kirstie a 27, they only increase the number of votes she needs to almost 31k – less than 2 thousand per one million votes. Chump change, actually. I’m thinking 2k votes for Kirstie isn’t that hard, but what about the initial 29k?? That is less clear. I think she can do it – she seems to have a tremendous amount of support. In order to win the show at that point, Kirstie would have to get that number of votes more that BOTH Hines and Chelsea.

What about Hines? Well, right now (and if he scores the same as Chelsea tonight), he only needs ONE more vote per million votes cast to beat Chelsea and take first place, provided that Kirstie doesn’t blow both of them out of the water.

What happens if the judges rank them like they have in the past? Well, let’s say they give Chelsea the 30, Hines a 28 and Kirstie a 26. That would mean that Kirstie needs the following to WIN:

– She would need about 35,200 more votes per million votes cast to beat Chelsea, AND;
– She would need about 27,400 more votes per million votes cast to beat Hines.

In the above scoring scenario, what does Hines need to WIN the show?? He needs BOTH of the following to happen:

– He would need about 7,900 more votes per million votes cast than Chelsea, AND;
– He needs for Kirstie to NOT get 27,400 more votes per million votes cast than him.

As you can see, we’re dealing in pretty big numbers here EXCEPT for what it takes for Hines to beat Chelsea or Chelsea to beat Hines. Could be ONE vote, could be 8k. If all three of them dance their favorite dance, and it shakes out similar to how it did last night, I see Hines winning. As for who will take 2nd and 3rd – I have NO idea. I am very tempted to say that Kirstie will beat Chelsea, but that is a good number of votes. By having fewer dances this season, they actually inflate the spread a bit – that nearly 30k is going to be tough. I will be really interested in the outcome, for sure.

Scenario number TWO is the one where they eliminate one of the couples (3rd place) and THEN have the remaining two dance their favorite dance. For the sake of argument, first we’ll hypothesize that Kirstie takes 3rd and doesn’t dance again. Let’s also say that they give Chelsea a 30 and Hines a 28. For Hines to WIN in this scenario he needs 8,700 more votes per million votes cast than Chelsea. See, eliminating Kirsties 26 points means a lower overall total which translates to a slightly bigger spread and more votes for Hines. But not a huge number by any stretch. I would be shocked if he doesn’t win in this scenario.

Frankly, I’ll be very shocked if Chelsea wins in any of these scenarios, but it’s always possible that we over estimate Hines’ fanbase and the Steeler Nation. I sure hope someone told them how to vote. But I would also wager that he has the overall “independent” vote – which I think is far and away the larger voting block. I think if Hines somehow ends up in third place, that is Chelsea’s best chance at winning because Kirstie would still have to make up anywhere from 29k to 35k.

More interesting is what happens if, in Scenario Two, Kirstie beats Chelsea and Chelsea lands in 3rd place. That would mean that Kirstie got 35,200 more votes per million cast than Chelsea did – a very large number. If she can get that many more than Chelsea, can she beat Hines?? And that should be the question on everyone’s mind if Scenario Number 2 goes down. I’m going to wager that this is Hines’ game to lose.

I'm a nerd and proud of it. Two degrees in geology also means I love BEER. :-) I'm also a Derek lover - proud of that too. So don't scream at those of us on this site and call us a bunch of "biased Derek-lovers" - it's just ME. :-) It may sound like I hate DWTS at times, but really, I'm just a snarky nitpicker from way back. And I'm cynical and jaded too. But I do love DWTS. :-)

21 responses to "DWTS Season 12, The Finale – Dancing by the Numbers"

Excellent Heidi! I could NOT wait to get home from work to read your numbers post. So interesting and you give me hope Kirstie or Hines can win over Chelsea. Please please let that be the case!! If Kirstie wins, I am going to party like never before!!

Excellent post. A lot to think about. “Anyway, as I’ve said ad nauseum, I don’t have a problem with the judges ranking them – they’re entitled to do that, when they’re not on crack.” It’s that wacky crack thing goin on that gets things goofed up, you know?

I don’t care who wins, although I guess if going by celeb, I think I’d like it Chelsea>Kirstie>Hines. By pro, Maks>Kym>Mark. I like all the remaining folks though, so my rankings are by the slimmest of margins. I think Hines will win.

Now that I see the numbers, I definitely worry about Chelsea winning. I’m just not sure if Hines fans voted or voted enough to get him to win. I do think the Mark fans have power voting but yet I can’t help but think of Shannen and Kim. Plus I read Kannenballers saying things like “25 votes” “5 votes” “I called in” etc. And I’m thinking “That is NOT how to power vote. But there could be silent voters who aren’t revealing how many votes they gave to Kannenball and it could absolutely surpass “25 votes”.

In any case, I would LOVE to see Kirstie and Maks win. They had my favorite freestyle of the night, but my unbiased opinion is that Hines had the best freestyle and looking at it again, it sure was entertaining. So if he wins, I’ll be happy but I really want to see Kirstie win. Let’s just hope Mark, I mean Chelsea doesn’t win and I’ll be A-OK.

I have a hard time believing Chelsea can win or at least get in second place. And the worst part of it, well in her case, is that it some of it doesn’t have anything to do with her. I didn’t want to spare any votes for her because of Mark and the WTAC.

I may have heard this wrong, as I tend to block out Brooke during her “How does it feel” moment in the celebrequarium, but didn’t she make some comments to the dancers after their freestyle that it could be their ‘last dance’. I already deleted it from my DVR, but if she said that, it could be that they will reveal top two before the last dance. But last year, didn’t they do favorite and the cha-cha off – I remember Bristol re-did one of her dances that got her into trouble for breaking hold and she said ‘screw it’ and would do it again (or was that on the re-do dance?).

As always, great to see the numbers. One of these days, we need to recruit an ex-DWTS employee (ply them with sparkles and jewels) to reveal a past couple of elimination public voter totals. It would be interesting to see how big a spread there is between contestants as a total % of votes cast.

I thought that Kelly did do her favorite dance – the Week 1 V waltz. And Bristol repeated her tango from Rock Week. Everyone’s favorite dance in Season 10 was A tango. Erin was eliminated after that but before dancing the fourth dance (a new cha-cha).

I think it’s going to come down to fanbase considering the scores aren’t too drastically different (at least right now!), and no one really stood out too much last night. If Chelsea had a fantastic freestyle, that may have been a game changer, but I just don’t see her surpassing Hines or Kirstie in terms of votes. Especially considering that Chelsea was a bit overscored. I don’t think many of the casual viewers would be motivated to throw any votes Chelsea’s way after a not so great freestyle that got great scores.

Maddy, how do you see that they’ve been accommadating to Kirstie? If anyone, they’ve been accomodating to Chelsea all Season by over scoring her…and then there is the freeride bonus dance they gave her. Oh well.

If Chelsea really has a small base, it would be embarrassing for her if she got first or second in the ranked dances today and then go out third, right? Maybe the judges will rank them today based on the fan votes. If they dance their waltz, it was that untraditional dance which can justify a lower ranking. Or they will put her first to keep her in the running. Hines and Kym have been the best pair so I hope they win.